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D6000 flicker is sending me to the rubber room
I have
- Dell Latitude 5580 Laptop
- Dell D6000 Docking Station
- 2 x Dell UltraSharp U2412MB Monitors (Connected via DisplayPort on dock)
- 1 x Dell UltraSharp U2917W Monitor (Connected via HDMI on dock)
The U2917W has an intermittent flicker that is about to send me to the rubber room. It's just enough to be highly annoying. The other two monitors occasionally blink on and off, but I can live with that (sad that I have to).
What I've done that hasn't made a difference:
- Dell has replaced the dock twice, no change
- New cables multiple time
- Switched monitors around
- Dell has replaced the mother board twice (still not sure why)
- Updated and replaced drivers over and over again
Here's an interesting tidbit, if I unplug the HDMI cord from the dock and plug it directly into the laptop's HDMI port, the flicker goes away. This is what I'm doing with the flicker get's too annoying, but I hate the solution. I should be able to plug in the single USB 3 cable and it should work (I know...right!).
Dell support has been good at contacting me, and they have asked me to try the things I've already tried, but I honestly believe they don't know why this is happening. I see that others are having similar problems with this dock. Can anyone think of something else I can try!
Thanks!!
-Jeff
jphughan
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January 3rd, 2018 15:00
If you haven't already, you might try getting the latest drivers straight from DisplayLink rather than Dell (just go to DisplayLink.com), but if even that doesn't fix it, if your Latitude 5580 has the Thunderbolt 3 option rather than just regular USB-C, you might have more luck with the TB16 since that dock taps into the native GPU outputs wired to the Thunderbolt 3 output rather than using a DisplayLink chip. I just wrote a post detailing the differences between these mechanisms over in this thread if you're curious. Another perk of the TB16 is that if you buy it with the 240W adapter, it will be able to charge your 5580 over its connector, whereas the D6000 only supplies 60W of power over USB-C, which isn't enough for a 5580, at least not enough to avoid slower charging speed and/or CPU throttling if you don't also have the system's AC adapter connected.
If your 5580 only has USB-C and not the Thunderbolt 3 option, there's the WD15 dock, which also taps into that port's native GPU output and could charge your 5580 (you'd need the 180W adapter with the WD15), but it only supports dual 1080p displays, which would seem not to work for your use case.
jphughan
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January 4th, 2018 07:00
One likely less expensive alternative would be keeping 2 displays connected to the D6000 and buying just a simple USB to HDMI adapter for the third currently problematic display. Just make sure that it supports a sufficiently high resolution, since there are several generations of DisplayLink products out there right now that have different generations of chipsets and therefore different capabilities. Good luck!
3232
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January 4th, 2018 07:00
Thanks for your reply!
I just updated the DisplayLink drivers, and it is still doing the same thing. Unfortunately, the 5580 doesn't have the Thunderbolt 3 output, and you are correct, the WD15 dock won't support my three monitors.
I'm considering one of the competitors to the D6000 on Amazon. Either that, or buying a DisplayLink splitter to drive two of the monitors, and then the third connected to the D6000.